“3.5 million people will experience homelessness in a given year,”(Los Angeles Homeless Services). This shocking number is one of the sad truths in today’s society. Homelessness is caused by a wide range of things including financial issues. The life of a homeless person is hard and comes with set-backs and the constant need to overcome them. Homeless people go through many challenges in surviving without a home. They can suffer from health issues, hunger, and poor emotional well-being.
There are many other cases of why the homeless are homeless like domestic violence, mental illness, addictions, and unaffordable health care. Homelessness is a problem which has been caused by many different aspects but mainly money because of massive unemployment rates. A hidden aspect to homelessness that we may not think of is ...
Homelessness in the United States has been an important subject that the government needs to turn its attention to. There has been announced in the news that the number of the homeless people in many major cities in the United States has been increasing enormously. According to United States Interagency Council on Homelessness reported that there was an estimation of 83,170 individuals have experienced chronic homelessness on the streets of the United States’ streets and shelters on only a single night of January 2015, which is a small decrease of only 1% from the previous year (People Experiencing Chronic Homelessness, n.d.). The United States must consider this subject that most of the people underestimate it and not pay attention
"Who Is Homeless?" Nationalhomeless. National Coalition for the Homeless, July 2009. Web. 3 May 2014. .
Homelessness is usually interpreted by many as a person that has a financial or housing problem. This has been a major issue across the United States, thousands of people living without shelter. Homelessness is defined as individuals or families who cannot afford their own place to live, due to unexpected life occurrences. To measure whether, or not an individual qualifies to be homeless is determined by a person not having a sustainable or permanent home. This could mean living on the streets, in a shelter home, or going from one place to the next in short periods of time. In one night alone more than 578,000 people come across homeless on a daily bases. (How do you define ‘homeless’ in America) However homelessness in America is a problem we see everyday. (How do you define ‘homeless’ in America) According to research,
According to the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness, “approximately 3.5 million people are homeless each year, while 36.3 million live in households without enough food.” This statistic only reflects the United States, and to many people, it just doesn’t make sense. For instance Alfredzine Black of the YWCA in Marion, Indiana says, “I don’t understand why we have so much poverty in the richest country in the world!” Citizens of the United States have a hard time defining and identifying poverty in their communities, so the country should crate a consistent and accurate measure of poverty. Also, urban growth is leaving people behind and causing unnecessary evictions that lead to homelessness, and this problem can be solved by following the advice of housing experts. Last, homeless shelters in the United States are losing government funding, but this could change by allowing for more government spending on shelters and feeding programs. Thus, homelessness is a social injustice in the United States because everyone deserves to be recognized as homeless and therefore assisted, and everyone deserves a safe place to live.
The many causes of the homelessness issue has arisen from global conflict, unemployment increase, education tuition costs rising, and the increase of poverty. Homelessness is affecting all ages, ethnicities, and religions striking in both urban and rural communities. “Just last year, the national poverty rate rose to include 13.2% of the population. 1 in 7 people were at risk of suffering from hunger in the United States. In addition, 3.5 million people were forced to sleep in parks, under bridges, in shelters or cars.”
To be homeless means that one’s primary residence is a public or private shelter, emergency housing, hotel, motel, living with family or friends or any public space – like parks, automobiles, aqueducts or abandoned buildings (Pawlas, 1996).
"Overview of Homelessness In America." National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2014. .
Homeless is a convenient label for a variety of objective and subjective conditions of impoverish (Gory, M.l., Ritchey, F.J., & Mullis, J.,1990: Phelan, Link, Moore and Stueve, 1997). One serious obstacle to the study of homeless is the lack of characteristics of homelessness. National Heath Care for the Homeless (2016) shared there are groups of people who experience homelessness in different ways, but all homelessness is characterized by extreme poverty coupled with a lack of stable housing (Lee, Tyler & Wright, 2010). According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2016), homelessness refers to “having no home or permanent place of residence.” Persons who are housed marginally are defined as homeless. Others define homeless
Without a doubt, the homeless population is on the rise. Everyone has seen a man or woman standing on a street corner with a sign asking for money. With the enormous increase in rent all throughout the city and without a steady income, more people are now living on the streets or in “tent cities”.
Homelessness has different meanings to different people; someone who has never been homeless might think homelessness is a person who lives on the street, in a tent or in a box. Many people don’t realize that there are a number of homeless people, who couch surf with friends, family or the ones who live in motels which are unaccountable in the numbers of homeless people. People including families with children, seniors, single parents, youths and those that are single are living in accommodations that are below standards and consider themselves as homeless.
Although most people know what homelessness is and it occurs in most societies, it is important to define because the forces of displacement vary greatly, along with the arrangement and meaning of the resulting transient state. The Stewart B McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 defined a homeless person as “an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence or a person who resides in a shelter, welfare hotel, transitional program or place not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation, such as streets, cars, movie theaters, abandoned buildings, etc.” Resent surveys conducted in the U.S. have confirmed that the homeless population in America is extremely diverse and includes representatives from all segments of society, including: the old and young, men and women, single people and families, city dwellers and rural residents, whites and people of color, employed and unemployed, able workers and people with serious health problems. The diversity among people that are homeless reflects how difficult it is to generalize the causes of homelessness and the needs of homeless people. Robert Rosenheck M.D., the author of Special Populations of Homeless Americans, explains the importance of studying homelessness based on subgroups, “each subgroup [of homeless people] has unique service needs and identifying these needs is critical for program planning and design.” Despite these diversities, homelessness is a devastating situation for all that experience it. Not only have homeless people lost their dwelling, but they have also lost their safety, privacy, control, and domestic comfort.
Tunstall, L. (2009). Homelessness: an overview. EBSCO Publishing Service Selection Page. Retrieved February 5, 2011, from http://web.ebscohost.com/pov/detail?hid=119&sid=d5f751fa-0d0d-4ed1-8deb-483e701af50c%40sessionmgr111&vid=3&bdata=Jmxhbmc9ZW4tY2Emc2l0ZT1wb3YtY2Fu#db=p3h&AN=28674966